It was a moment that reshaped history. On May 29, 1453, the once-mighty capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople—reverently called “the Queen of Cities”—fell to the Ottoman forces under the command of Sultan Mehmed II, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire.

Founded by Emperor Constantine the Great, Constantinople had long stood as the shining center of Orthodox Christianity and imperial power. Its fall, however, had been centuries in the making.

The ambition to conquer the city had stirred the Muslim world for generations. Arab forces had laid siege to it seven times, while the Turks attempted to breach its walls five times in just 57 years. But it was not solely the Ottomans who wore the city down. Historians point to the irreversible decline sparked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when Western Christian forces sacked the city in one of history’s most catastrophic betrayals.

As journalist Augustine Zenakos notes, the city’s fate was sealed over two centuries earlier. When Crusaders and Venetians of the Christian West plundered Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire fractured. It split into three successor states: the Empire of Nicaea, the Despotate of Epirus, and the Empire of Trebizond.

In 1259, Michael Palaiologos—then a usurper to the Nicaean throne—succeeded in expelling the Venetians from the city with Genoese support. Crowned in 1261 as Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, hailed as “the Liberator,” he reclaimed a broken and impoverished empire. Constantinople itself was a shadow of its former glory—its churches desecrated, its population reduced, and its coffers empty.

Over the next two centuries, the Byzantine state withered, wracked by civil wars, devastated by the Black Death of 1347, and having lost nearly all of its territories. Constantinople dwindled into a city-state under siege.

By March 1453, Sultan Mehmed II closed in on the city with a powerful army and a fearsome new weapon: a giant cannon built by Hungarian engineer Orban, hauled by 60 oxen.

On April 5, the sultan appeared outside the city walls, leading 12,000 elite Janissaries. His gold-and-crimson tent was raised in the Valley of the Lycus, just outside the Gate of St. Romanus. The Turkish fleet seized the Princes’ Islands and blockaded the Sea of Marmara, cutting off supplies to the besieged city.

On April 6, Mehmed offered the defenders a final ultimatum: surrender, and no harm would come to them. Refuse, and there would be no mercy. The Byzantines refused.

The Final Night

On the night of May 28, Orthodox and Catholic clergy held a final, historic joint service in Hagia Sophia. For the first and last time, the deeply divided Christian denominations came together in prayer, united by fate.

Just after midnight, the Ottomans launched their final assault. The city’s defenders, vastly outnumbered, fought valiantly. For a fleeting moment, hope flickered.

But then, a pivotal blow: Giovanni Giustiniani, the Genoese commander leading the defense, was gravely wounded. As he was carried away, the defense line wavered—and broke.

Seeing the breach, the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, removed all imperial insignia from his uniform and rushed to the walls to fight as a soldier. He was never seen again.